Microsoft has announced a public preview of its SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, the next version of SharePoint Server for enterprise customers. This new subscription-based product has been designed for on-premises deployments, and it will help enterprise customers to keep their environment updated and secure.
“Organizations require collaboration, communication, and productivity solutions to be both cost-effective and flexible. SharePoint Server Subscription Edition can help you achieve new levels of reliability and performance, delivering features and capabilities that simplify administration, protect communications and information, and empower people in your organization to achieve more, the SharePoint team explained.
As for the new features, SharePoint Server Subscription Edition brings support for OpenID Connect 1.0 authentication protocol, which facilitates the enforcement of policies on clients before access is granted. Microsoft has also added modern infrastructure support and fixed an issue with the People Picker feature when using SAML 1.1 or OIDC 1.0 as identity providers.
The SharePoint Server Subscription Edition has been designed to ensure security and reliability by providing a cost-effective and flexible solution for performing major version upgrades. The company promises to keep its SharePoint Server Subscription Edition up to date, and it has made it easier for IT admins to install product updates. “With SharePoint Server Subscription Edition, you’ll end the cycle of long and costly major version upgrades to get new features and remain in support,” said Bill Baer, Microsoft Senior Product Marketing Manager for SharePoint.
Microsoft says that enterprise customers running SharePoint Server 2016 or newer will be able to upgrade to SharePoint Server Subscription Edition directly. However, it is mandatory for organizations running the legacy versions of the SharePoint Server to upgrade to SharePoint Server 2016/2019 to make a switch. The software giant has not detailed the pricing and support changes pricing for SharePoint Server Subscription Edition yet.
To get started with the SharePoint Server Subscription Edition Public Preview, you will need to head to the dedicated website, and the additional Language Packs can be downloaded from here. You can also check out the full list of features, administrative, deployment, and security guidelines on this support page.
